Messages - Legal Ease

After my big law research has put me into a state of utter hopelessness, from looking all day at bios that outclass my own, I have started trying to hunt down some local firms with interesting practice areas.

Is Martindale the best resource for this?

While I'm at it - I understand that the hiring schedule for these firms can be quite different than that of larger firms. Is it most reasonable to simply send a letter of interest at the earliest possible time?

has your school's career services office put out their OCI listings yet? i see a lot of firms asking only for top 15% or top 1/3, or sometimes just top 50% or less. i think 88th percentile is good, just not cutting it for some of the biggest law firms.

my opinion: rule out the most selective firms and then take your pick, just make sure you do something you enjoy and perform well in. they say the first job isn't exactly a lifetime commitment.

An incredibly important and commonly overlooked thing to consider is what was just mentioned in the previous post: Minimum GPA. I turned down a few lower Tier 1 schools, and lesser scholarships at Tier 2's, to go to a 90's ranked school on full scholarship. I figured hey, 3.25 GPA should be a breeze, they obviously want me bad enough and think I have a ton of potential, I have nothing to worry about! I worked very hard all semester, knew the material well, but am just below the GPA cut-off, and am losing about 39K/year. Now it seems that the whole point of me going to this school has become null, and because of how random law school grading can be, I may have done even better at a higher ranked school.

i am sorry to hear this happened to anyone. that is really a horror story.

i guess my school was pretty generous to allow the top 60% to keep scholarships.

i diagnosed at about 156, then brought practice scores up to low 170s. official was 167. i had some bad luck on exam day, IMO. (doubled up on my weakest section (RC) and my strongest section (AR) was so easy i finished way early.)

not that i studied constantly, but there was a couple years time elapsed between first looking at it and deciding to sit for the official one. of course today, there doesn't seem to be much risk in taking it before you are fully prepared. schools look at highest scores now, not averages. so you can retake with just a small fee ($135 is not a lot in the big scheme of things here).

i think, from 144, your first step should be to make sure you understand formal logic. after that you just do practice tests, at a moderate pace. you should be able to improve at least 10 points. best of luck.

I took the T3 $$$ option and I am happy with the decision. I made the law review. Law review is a chance for me to study and write about topics that pertain to my own interest. Seems invaluable, although it will only pay back what I put in.

Whether you are at a T1 or a T3, you have to put in the effort to become a professional. There is no shortcut to that - great schools don't surgically implant the ability into their students.

Also I agree with Killjoy. It's a good point about the lenience for a well-written exam. I think the profs get disgusted reading some of the exams. Many of them are probably quite awful because they are written under a timed environment and the authors are not always working with a full understanding of the law or even the question. Still, you need to quickly learn what is expected in a legal essay. Within an essay, you could make the most outstanding, insightful point, but it might score exactly the same as a mundane but equally applicable and accurate point. The question is how many distinct, point-scoring sentences do you get on paper in a readable fashion, within the time constraints; not how brilliant your arguments are.

Occasionally I long to be at one of the top schools, schmoozing with their all-star cast. But I just didn't have the money. And really, I would be stressing a lot more if I had a lot of debt piling up. I don't like unnecessary stress all that much.

Hi folks, I understand the hiring season for 2L summer work is pretty much the start of this fall. I am worried what to do if I don't get any associateship offers. What type of fallback plan should a student make? It seems almost like applying to law school again - you might apply to a few reaches, and then some standbys. The thing is, I don't want to apply to some backup job that I don't even want. That seems dishonest - and neither do I want to work for $10 per hour when I have a reasonable shot at high-paying firm positions. How does one approach the fall semester hiring season?

And subsequently, supposing 2L summer did not go so well, how would a 3L go about seeking work without good 2L summer work experience to mention?

Just throwing this out there... Anybody got their finger on the pulse of the IP law scene? I want to write on a rewarding topic, and I've got until the fall to decide. Suggestions? This is a law review assignment for the fall. I thought I would ask here before I started doing possibly misdirected research.

I would suggest talking to your professors about it, if you have not already...

Did you figure out what went wrong on your exams? Can you see yourself working at a law firm, now that you've seen some of what law is all about?

I think 167 LSAT means you are pretty sharp. That should mean you could do well on some of the other standardized tests... Maybe go for a ph.D?

How are you going to pass your next two years if you couldn't keep up with this year, even with the scholarship on the line? Next year your workload will be harder and you won't have the scholarship. You'll be looking at increasing debt and possibly higher stress than ever before...

If you can't figure out what went wrong and a way to fix it, then next semester is a fairly high risk bet, financially speaking.